2 Vermont Journalists Arrested @ Madison Protests

A colleague of mine, Sam Mayfield, with whom I serve on a local public media board, was arrested yesterday in Madison, Wis., while doing work on a documentary about the ongoing protests in the state Capitol.

Things in the crowd were pretty riled up and, at one point, an officer grabbed Alex, Sam’s assistant, and started taking her away. Both Alex and Sam had previously identified themselves as journalists. Sam kept following Alex in order to film the arrest, and at some point the officer tried to grab Sam’s video camera (“it’s evidence,” he said later). Sam pulled back when he made a grab for the camera, and so he arrested her as well.

You can see everything in the following video, which is riveting. In the video, Alex is the first woman you see being dragged away; Sam initially is filming, wearing mod glasses and a cap.

UPDATE 11:50 a.m. Sam just wrote to say that she’s filing a police report today. This story still hasn’t touched the national media, however, and it should.

Here is a report that includes the video she shot. Sam notes that, in the video @0.32, you can hear her say, “I’m with the press,” to which the police officer says “then you can go to . . . ” Wrote Sam: “He says this as he is dragging away my assistant. Shortly thereafter he detains me.”